Drop (27 page)

We walk to where she’s parked.

“Hop in the awesomobile!” She opens the boot and chucks my bags in.

I’d forgotten how amazing Sal’s car is. A ’72 Ford Maverick Grabber with a not-so-classy brown and yellow paint job and furry seat covers.
Zoom, zoom. Hello, retro.

“I love this car. I want to pet the seats like puppies. And what is that?” I point to the stereo. “An eight-track player?”

“Sure is. How do you even know what an eight-track is? You’re, like,
eight
years old.”

“I like vintage.”

Sal steers the awesomobile like a guided missile out of Cardiff and into the sticks. It doesn’t take long for the questions to start tumbling out.

“So tell me about your trip,” I say. “Did you have fun with Toadie and Dr Karl?”

“Screw that, Carla! What’s happened to get you exiled to the valleys?”

“Oh. Nothing. Mum and Dad whipping up a shit storm over nothing as usual.”

From the car window, jagged limestone outcrops burst from murky green hills.

“If you say so,” Sal says, “but either you’re going to spill it now or I’m going to hassle you for the next week. I’ll use my Jedi mind powers if I have to.” Sal wobbles a hand towards me. “Use the Force.”

“Watch the road, Sal.”

“Ooh, tetchy. Fine.” Sal huffs. “But I’m a good listener, you know. And I can tell something’s up. You’re white as a sheet and getting really skinny.”

I pinch my stomach. “Am not.” But I’m secretly pleased she’s noticed. Not that I’ve changed my diet much; stress, drugs and dancing have a slimming effect.

Sal shrugs. “You totally are.”

Sal hammers the awesomobile around a few more hairy bends up the country lanes. My bum flies off the seat several times, and then we’re here.

Janice and Sal live in a house that smells of sawdust and old board games. The floorboards squeak. It’s homey. Warm. The sofas are scarlet and there are hand-sewn throws and crocheted cushions everywhere.

There’s a big leather armchair that can eat you whole. I love it. This is my first visit in years. We spent holidays here when I was little, and it’s all coming back to me now: the sunlit conservatory where we left our muddy wellies and the kitchen that reminds me of those individual variety pack cereals we only ever had on holiday. The big back garden with pear trees and a rope swing. I remember Dad giving me a sparkler there one Guy Fawkes night. We ate hotdogs and sat on the patio steps and he told me about the stars. There was no light pollution, and we could see the whole band of the Milky Way.

“Earth to Carla.” Sal taps me on the noggin. “Hellloooo?”

“Sorry, miles away.”

“Mum’s here.”

Aunt Janice smooshes my face against her in a tight, borderline awkward hug. “Your dad says you need a break.”

“I suppose,” I say, nodding.

She’s wearing jeans and a knitted jumper with an oh-so-bad-it’s-good blue diamond pattern, and I can’t work out whether it’s intentionally retro or just a coincidence. Her wavy blonde hair’s pulled back in a ponytail. I wonder whether she’d look like Mum if her hair was neat and her clothes, designer. Probably. If Mum chilled out and let herself get scruffy once in a while, would she be more like Janice?

I move to take my stuff upstairs.

“Don’t unpack, Carla. Had an idea on the way home.” Sal turns from me to Janice. “Mum, we’re going to take the awesomobile and go camping out at the Rock. Think of it as a vision quest. We’re young and going off to find ourselves in the wilderness.”

“That’s a bit sudden, love.”

“Carla’s in need of spiritual guidance. The kind you can only get by being at one with nature. Also, it’s sunny. In Wales. We’d better make the most of it.”

“Well, if that’s what you want to do… I’ll pack you some food.”

“Your mum’s so nice,” I whisper.

The Rock is actually a pile of rocks on a hill. Below it is a group of oak trees.

“How about that thicket over there?” I ask.

“Thicket?” Sal mocks. “Right-o, jolly good. Looks like a spiffing spot!”

In a clearing among the trees, a couple of logs lie on the ground beside a blackened patch for fires.

Sal takes a large disc from the boot of the car and unzips its edge. She throws it in the air and a tent magically appears. “Help me peg, will you?” she asks.

I take a metal rod from the peg bag. “This isn’t a peg. It’s a barbecue skewer.”

“Oh, yeah,” Sal chuckles. “Tino and I had a peg incident camping in the Bush in Oz. Wine plus hammer equals bent pegs. I was lucky to escape with all my toes. Not an example I want you to follow, by the way.”

“I see.” I smile at Sal then roll my eyes. I hammer in the last improvised peg. “That’s got to be record time for setting up camp.”

“I like to keep things simple. Besides. Let’s not waste time. Tell me what’s been going on, CC. I’m worried about you. You look ill.”

“Cheers, mate!”

“Well, you do. Your pasty complexion offends me. You look like an anaemic ghost.”

“Compared to you, maybe. Ronseal’s not good for your skin, you know.”

“Ha bloody ha.”

The temperature drops a few degrees and I pull on a hoodie. After gathering some wood, we light a fire. The moon looks chalky in the grey-blue sky but brightens as night falls. Sal twists a marshmallow on a stick over the flames. It starts to bubble and she pulls it out, blowing furiously on the gooey pink blob which slides off the stick and onto the ground.

“Oops.” She shrugs and spikes another one. This time she manages to get it toasted
and
to her mouth. “Spill it, then.”

I shake my head, pull my hood up, and try to hide.

“No story, no marshmallows.”

So I tell Sal all about Finn and Violet, the drugs, the dealing, the lies, Isaac, the almost-kiss…

She listens and nods, without judgement.

“Shit.” Sal moves to sit beside me on the log. I stick out my hands to warm them by the fire. She puts her arm around me and I rest my head on her shoulder. I can’t believe I didn’t talk to her earlier.

I pull out a pack of tobacco and roll a cigarette. Sal gawks.

“Yeah, and now I feel like I need to smoke,” I say, disappointed in myself. “Hangover from doing it all the time with Finn. I want to stop, but it’s hard.”

She lets me light up.

“You’ve changed so much. What happened to the studious kid? You never said anything in your messages. I thought it was just the usual teen-angst stuff. But the drugs. You’ve
got
to give those up.” Sal squeezes my arm. She doesn’t sound preachy.

“I haven’t done them for ages.”

“Good.”

We talk until the sun appears over the distant hills, painting a pink pastel crown on their heads.

I tuck into my sleeping bag, wrapping it tight to my ears. My eyelids are heavy as lead and I fall quickly into a sweet, dreamless sleep. The best I’ve had in months.

We spend the next day lazing and talking rubbish, until Sal cracks the whip. She spots my rucksack, chocka with revision books, and drags it over to where I’m sitting on one of the logs, my head in my phone, replying to a message from Georgia… I’ve got a lot of respect for Georgia. There’s more to her behind the red lipstick, and she hasn’t stopped talking to me like some of the others – Slinky, Mike, Greg… I think they’re all under the Violet Brody spell, but not Georgia. She does as she pleases.

“Glad to see you brought your bag of bricks. Never know when they might come in handy,” Sal says.

“Please remove that sack of evil from my vicinity.”

“Nope. Come on, Carla. You don’t have to do it alone. Let me help you. I’m a
great
teacher. I taught a koala to wink.”

I roll my eyes. “Course, that’s
exactly
the same as teaching someone.” I open the Psychology textbook to a random page, and read, “about
the main features of the sympathomedullary pathway
.”

“Totally. Although fair play, the koala had been hit by a car and perhaps suffered some kind of facial deformity as a result, or brain injury or something.”

“You’re really filling me with confidence in your teaching skills.”

“You want the help or not?”

“All right, all right. Please help me, oh wise koala whisperer. But I can already wink.” I throw my best Fonz impression at Sal.

“Atta girl. Now, let’s fill that brain of yours with the good stuff. When we’re finished you’ll be the Einstein of sympo–sympa–homo–meadow–ways…”

“Sympathomedullary pathways,” I say.

“That’s what I said.” Sal pulls a notebook out of the bag and hands it to me, along with a pen. “Now, less talkie-talkie, more learnie-learnie.”

Sal and I spend another day at the Rock, by which time I’m so grimy and gagging for a shower – and to charge my phone – that I practically beg to go back to her house and be reunited with technology, hot water and a meal that doesn’t include:

1. baked beans

2. packet noodles or

3. today’s lunchtime treat, cremated sausages.

It’ll take a hell of a lot of ketchup to make
these
palatable.

“Shrivelled devil fingers,” I say, stabbing one with my fork and examining its wrinkles.

Sal grabs one from her plate. “Pokey, pokey,” she says, jabbing me in the arm with it. “Eat me, Carla,” she says, in a voice for the sausage. “You need fattening up. Skinny cow. Eaaaaat meeeee!”

I grimace and lean back on the log. “Stay back, I have a mug of cold beans and I’m not afraid to use them.”

“Eaaaaat meeeee!” Sal moves forwards, brandishing the sausage.

“Quit harrassing me!” I start to laugh and fall back on the log, the beans ejecting from the mug and all down my front. Sal breaks into hysterics.

“OK,” I say, “enough wilderness exploration. Time to re-enter society … where they have showers … internet … food
not
possessed by demons.”

“Right you are, CC,” Sal says, still grinning from ear to freaking ear.

I love that girl.

Back at the house I’m fed and watered and feeling human again. To tell the truth, Janice is a bit of a feeder. Homemade pumpkin bread. Cheese. Blueberry muffins. Like, every hour, the hostess trolley comes by with a selection of snacks. First class.

I sit in the giant armchair, cosy, but not content, rereading the Emily Dickinson poems for the sixty-millionth time.

“Brain food,” Janice says, handing me a packet of Brazil nuts.

But however many goji berries and spinach leaves I eat, I doubt my brain will be ready for what’s coming…

I thought I would be ecstatic to be heading back to the Big Smoke, but I’m not.

Things I’m categorically
not
looking forwards to facing when I get back, in no particular order:

1. EXAMS

2. DAD’S RUBBISH COOKING

3. STAYING UP ALL NIGHT (CRAMMING, NOT BECAUSE I’M ON DRUGS)

4. VIOLET’S STUPID FACE.

Sal rounds the awesomobile into the coach station. “Call me any time,” she says.

I smile my best brave smile, but I’m sad to leave. I drag my ass from the front seat and my loaded bag from the back seat. Janice has filled any gaps with snacks.

A box of fresh-baked cookies falls to the ground.

“Your mum’s amazing,” I say. “It’s a wonder you don’t have to be airlifted out of the house.”

“Blessed with a fast metabolism. Dad was a hummingbird.”

“You’re so weird. But I love you for it.”

Sal gets out of the car and comes around to my side.

“Enough soppy stuff, little one. Here,” she says, handing me the rucksack, “don’t forget your bag of bricks.”

“How could I forget?” I gear up for the goodbye. “Thanks for—”

“No worries.” Sal attempts a frankly abysmal wink, her whole face scrunching.

“And you say you taught a koala to wink? You look like you’re in pain. Please refrain from winkage in the future. For your own safety.”

Sal drowns me in a hug. “I’ll miss you, kid. See you soon, all right?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“You’ll be fine, CC.”

I head to the coach that will take me not only home, but back to reality, and I think about what Sal said.
I will be fine
.
I have to be
.

On the journey, I realize that this
punishment
, this
banishment
, has been a blessing. I haven’t smoked, except for a couple of rollies while we were camping. I guess Sal provided a lot of distraction. I haven’t had a drink. I haven’t done any drugs or even thought about them. I’ve got on with my schoolwork. I feel like the good Carla but without the shyness. Without the fear.

The thing is – and this bothers me, confuses me – I don’t miss Finn … but I do miss Isaac. Not once did I wonder what Finn was doing, where he was and who with… But Isaac? I thought about him, just a little. Arrrgh.
Begone, thoughts.
For now, it’s got to be all about my Pre-Raphaelites critical study. No room for
that
.

I open my laptop, its cursor flashing expectantly…

Pre-Raphaelites were taught the traditional way to paint, but went off and did their own thing. They were rebels who stood out from the rest.

I think about everything that’s happened. If going out with Finn and everything that came with it was my way of standing out, then was it worth it? Have I emerged from the chrysalis a winged beauty? Um, no. I need to
be someone
, to remove my invisibility cloak, but God knows how. Sometimes I feel I’m right back at the start, a nobody, unreflected in the mirror.